[narrator] It's one of the greatest alien abduction stories of all time.
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In 1975, six men in northeast Arizona
witnessed their crew mate kidnapped by a UFO.
I hollered out, "They got him!"
[narrator] But was Travis Walton
really taken by aliens or did his crewmates
have something to do with his disappearance?
[John] The sheriff kept telling me,
"If you just tell us where the body is?
We can all go home."
[reporter 1] The six men who reportedly eye witnessed the incident
have taken lie detector tests.
[narrator] The story became an international sensation,
inspiring books, and a Hollywood movie,
and it ripped apart a small town.
This doesn't sound like a true tale to me.
[narrator] What happened to Travis Walton
that fateful night?
What torture was he subjected to?
Forty five years later, shocking new evidence
reveals the true story behind...
Fire in the Sky,
the abduction of Travis Walton.
[dramatic music playing]
[man 1] A.P.R.O.
The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
in Tucson, Arizona.
They were seeing several hundred reports of UFO
sightings each year from all over the world.
But one of the most bizarre reports came recently
from A.P.R.O.'s own backyard,
the town of Snowflake, Arizona.
[chainsaw buzzing]
[narrator] The story begins on an ordinary day.
A seven men logging crew packs up after hours
of hard work in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
[John] It was a typical day of working hard out there.
We worked up until the sun started going down.
And by the time we got all loaded up
and ready to go, it was getting fairly dark.
[narrator] The tight-knit crew begins
the rough 30-mile drive back home to Snowflake, Arizona.
Foreman Mike Rogers is behind the wheel
when the men noticed something strange.
We hadn't gone very far.
I mean, maybe a quarter of a mile.
The guys started seeing a light through the trees.
[Steve] There was a bright light
over to the right of us and we couldn't really tell what it was.
[John] I first thought it was the Moon.
I turned, I looked over the other way
and there's the Moon, you know?
[narrator] Could it be a hunter's campfire?
An airplane crash?
The answer is even more terrifying.
Right when you come around that bend
it just hits you all at once.
It was just like a saucer
just sat in the air, not moving.
It was, uh, softly glowing.
Like from the inside out.
[narrator] Twenty-two-year-old Travis Walton
in the passenger seat startles everyone.
Before Mike even stopped,
Travis had, had the door open and was getting out.
[Mike] Travis took off in a fairly brisk walk up towards it.
And he stood there for just a few seconds
and this thing started making noise.
[eerie sound]
It was shocking, very shocking.
I heard this noise, I go, "Oh, crap."
I felt this rumble, you know, in the steering wheel.
That spooked me.
[indistinct shouting]
We were yelling, "Come on, get back in here!"
Travis, come back!
[John] We were all terrified.
And all of the sudden, this bluish light came out.
The woods lit up like a bluish green.
It zapped him in the chest.
He flies back about 15 feet at least.
His body bounces off the ground.
Mike turns on the pickup and takes off.
[Mike] There was blind panic.
White knuckles.
We went down the road about a quarter of a mile...
...then I hit the brakes.
[tires screeching]
[indistinct chatter]
The guys in the truck were saying,
"What are you stopping for?
That thing could be chasing us," you know?
And I said, "We left Travis back there.
So, we have to go back."
That's when I became hysterical, basically.
Go back, right now.
You don't know what it was.
We have to go back and get him.
While we were outside of the truck we saw a flash.
Now, I assumed it was that craft.
Just in a straight, just... Like that.
[Steve] Everybody got their courage back
till we saw it take off.
[John] Couldn't leave Travis out there.
You just don't leave a guy behind.
[Mike] We went back...
...very slow.
Buddy!
Travis!
[John] We walked around the perimeter
looking in the bushes and that, you know,
to see if he had crawled off.
-Travis. -Travis!
Travis!
[John] But he was nowhere to be found.
That's when Mike, he kinda fell down
to the ground and kinda lost it.
I broke down.
I broke down because Travis wasn't there.
He was my best friend.
[narrator] Guilt-ridden, terrified
and in way over their heads,
the crew members decide to call law enforcement for help.
[Mike] We all got back in the truck, and we left.
And that was a very, very emotional trip.
All right, there's telephone.
[Steve] There's this phone at the sub station
as we get coming off the dirt road.
We called the sheriff's apartment.
[narrator] The first officer arriving on scene
is Navajo County sheriff's deputy, Chuck Ellison.
[Chuck Ellison] They were obviously very upset.
And I tried to get just as close to each one of them
as I could to see if I could detect odors
of marihuana, alcohol...
I didn't detect any.
[narrator] Sensing something amiss,
Ellison talks to each member of the crew.
Starting with foreman Mike Rogers.
[John] Mike, he was the boss, you know?
He called the shots and how things go,
where you're gonna go, you know, and all that.
[narrator] The missing man, Travis Walton,
dated Mike's sister, Dana.
Also in the crew is Mike's brother-in-law John Goulette.
John's the kind of person who gets along with everybody.
[John] I've known Travis for a long, long time.
I met him when he was a teenager
when I came up there to stay with Katie and Mike.
[narrator] Goulette brought two other friends onto the crew.
Dwayne Smith and Allen Dalis.
Allen Dalis was a... Mike said, "the black sheep."
here on the crew.
[John] He was a character. He was...
You know, he had his run ins
with the law and that, you know.
[narrator] Rounding up the crew are 26-year-old
Kenny Peterson and 17-year-old's Steve Pierce.
I was the gofer, you know?
'Cause I was the youngest.
[narrator] When the frightened crew members tell Deputy Ellison
that Travis was attacked by a UFO,
Ellison calls in his superior,
Sheriff Marlin Gillespie.
[Shelley Moore] Marlin Gillespie was my father.
He was the sheriff of Navajo County for many years.
At the time that the incident occurred
they called my father out
to involve him and other deputies.
[Steve] Sheriff Gillespie showed up
and we told him what happened,
and he was looking around for beer bottles and stuff,
'cause he didn't really believe our story.
[Shelley] He thought that these men saw something.
That part he believed because he said they were scared,
but he wasn't sure were they scared
because of what they had done
or were they really scared because what they believed
that Travis had been taken by a UFO?
[Steve] He looked at Mike, he says,
"You gotta go back and I want two volunteers
to come back with me.
The other three, I want you to go back to Snowflake
and don't leave town."
[narrator] Mike Rogers, Allen Dalis
and Kenny Peterson lead the sheriff
and his deputies to the site.
There's no trace of Travis.
Or the alleged craft.
I could not see a skid mark of any kind, like,
as if some kind of aircraft that touched on the ground.
I could not see a footprint of any kind.
I couldn't detect any odors.
I didn't see any burns,
and I said, "Well, we may as well leave because he's not here."
[narrator] Without industrial lightning equipment
or a huge force of officers,
the small-town sheriff's hands are tied.
He'll have to wait until morning to launch a search party
to find out if Travis Walton is injured,
dead or is it possible
that he was abducted by aliens?
[instrumental music playing]
[narrator] Twenty-two-year-old Travis Walton is missing.
Travis' older brother, Don, recalls the night
that changed his family's life forever.
[Don] Mother came over to my home about three o'clock in the morning.
Mama's pretty hysterical when she got there.
She kept repeating, "They got him. They got him."
I didn't know what to think.
[narrator] Across town, the other crewmen's families
anxiously await the arrival of their loved ones.
[Angie] I was at Mike's house because
Mike's then wife, Katie, and I were putting on a quilt.
We were gonna make this big ole quilt for a wedding,
and Mike didn't come home when he normally does.
Once it's dark you can't saw trees out in the woods.
We were starting to get kind of worried about him.
Katie's younger brother worked with Mike, too.
John Goulette,
so she was worried about him as well.
[narrator] But when Mike finally does make it home,
his family's worries only intensify.
They started telling us what was going on...
[dramatic music playing]
That's when we found out that it was Travis
that was missing, and my brother Mike
looked like he had aged 20-30 years just in that day.
Mike felt this big, huge weight on his shoulders.
He felt responsible for Travis.
[narrator] Mike and Angie's little sister, Dana,
who dated Travis at the time, can't believe what she hears.
Was her boyfriend attacked by an alien ship?
They just told me what happened.
I think they said "UFO."
And I was, you know, kind of shocked about what happened.
Like, it was hard to believe.
But it was really scary,
I was really worried about Travis,
but I could tell those guys were telling the truth.
They seemed very traumatized.
It scares the hell out of you
because your reality just becomes so different.
[dramatic music playing]
[serene music playing]
[narrator] As rays of early morning sunlight
stretch across Navajo County, Arizona,
the sleepy town of Snowflake
awakens to an unearthly, unsolved mystery.
When we got up the next morning, you know,
my mother had let us know that my father was investigating
something that had happened
out in the woods and that somebody had been abducted
by a UFO.
[narrator] News of Travis Walton's UFO abduction
spreads like wildfire.
I've always thought there could be UFO,
but, uh... That story's kinda farfetched.
We've seen 'em.
-You've seen 'em? -Yeah.
This doesn't sound like a true tale to me.
[Tammy Mills] My father was the deputy sheriff in Navajo County.
I remember my father coming home
and talking about it and he was rolling his eyes,
like... Hmm.
[Shelley] There was a lot of skepticism.
Most people were having a hard time believing it.
[John] It's a very religious community.
The elders of the church and that,
they were telling people, "Hey, you know,
this ain't true. You all don't believe it."
[Mike] My wife didn't know whether to believe it
or not, you know?
She was skeptical, you know?
[narrator] As the town of Snowflake debates
the existence of aliens and UFOs,
the rest of the world
focusses their attention on human space flight.
[man 2 over radio] Moving out. Clear the tower.
[man 3 over radio] Roger. Tower clear.
[narrator] Just seven years earlier, Apollo 11 first landed humans
on the Moon, and just a few months earlier,
in July of 1975,
the decade's long space race between the United States
and the Soviet Union
officially came to a peaceful end.
Proving that space exploration could overcome
such earth-bound conflicts as politics and nationalism.
Yet as mankind casts its hopeful eyes
to the sky, other mysteries from deepest space emerge.
Reports of UFO sightings and alien abductions
were on the rise in the mid-1970s.
1975 in particular was a, uh, an active year for UFOs.
Across the country there were sightings,
and we call this a flap.
It's a period of activity researchers,
uh, look for patterns as to why this particular location,
why this time?
[narrator] The state of Arizona routinely ranks
among the top areas in the world
for UFO-related events.
[Ben Hansen] If you go back to the summer of '47
there's newspaper articles of a craft
similar to what was described in Roswell
that happened only weeks or months before.
Then you have 1952, the Marana Air Force Base.
A silvery disk was reported hovering
over the air force base and when they scrambled jets
to try and get to it, it disappeared.
[Bryce Zabel] The American Southwest is home
to all kinds of military installations.
It's where we created the first nuclear bombs.
[explosion]
It's where Roswell happened.
Why does all this happen with UFOs?
Because it's so important to the United States government
and to our military projection of power,
and so it would make sense that if another intelligence
was here to find out what makes humans tick,
they might start there.
[narrator] Is there something in the Southwest territory
that attracts extra-planetary explorers?
Authorities in Snowflake don't believe claims
that Travis Walton was abducted by aliens.
But with the loggers whereabout unaccounted for,
law enforcements launches a massive manhunt.
[Shelley] The sheriff's department went up
on the rim to the Turkey Springs area
where this incident supposedly occurred.
They had the sheriff's posse out looking for him.
[Angie] They had helicopters and they had dogs.
There's people just walking.
They had all kinds of stuff looking for him
and they just looked and looked and looked.
[narrator] Travis' older brother Don,
a forest service employee, joins the search party.
It was a madhouse out there.
There's probably 150-200 people
out searching for Travis.
[narrator] The longer they look,
the more law enforcement and Travis' family
become suspicious of foul play.
[Tammy] They were thinking the crew got
in some kind of a skirmish and maybe killed Travis.
[Angie] Travis' family was all looking at Mike,
like, "Okay, Mike, where's our Travis?"
[Don] I thought maybe a bad accident
had happened where the chainsaw may hit his body.
[John] I did the first day, I went out there with them.
They kinda split us up and had us go in different routes.
And each group had a deputy sheriff.
He kept telling me, you know, "If you just tell us
where the body is, we can all go home."
[narrator] Although they reported Travis
was captured by a UFO,
the crew now realize they're suspected of murder.
[Chuck] As we started going through these brush piles,
I wanna know if there's anything
in those brush piles that might resemble a body.
Couldn't figure out what would happen to him, where he went, you know?
We were all confused, we couldn't figure out
why we couldn't find a body.
[narrator] Travis Walton may have disappeared
without a trace,
but there is evidence
that something very strange happened in those woods.
[Don] Region headquarters in Albuquerque,
they sent a man over at the request
of the sheriff's department to bring a Geiger counter.
Today I am the only living person
who saw the readings on that Geiger counter.
[narrator] Don claims he witnessed the Geiger counter needles spike.
Indicating a high level of radiation
at the alleged UFO site.
[Don] It was off scale.
You could see the difference in the...
What the needle was showing.
It would drop off after, at 100 yards.
That scared me. That kind of radiation.
[Geiger counter crackling]
[narrator] Could high levels of localize radiation
be evidence of an alien craft?
[instrumental music playing]
[reporter 2] Wood cutters said they were riding
in this truck along an isolated mountain road
when suddenly a spaceship hovered over them.
This is what the spaceship looked like according
to one of the men who drew this picture.
Another of the men, 22-year-old Travis Walton
reportedly got out of the truck
and approached the spaceship.
[narrator] As law enforcement and volunteers scour
the Sitgreaves National Forest for a second day,
the search for Travis Walton and the sensational claim
of his UFO abduction makes headlines around the world.
Media outlets descend upon Walton's hometown
of Snowflake, Arizona.
Our town had never really had any reporters at all,
and then all of the sudden there's like people
from all over the world, all different countries.
[Angie] It was just the strangest thing
that the word got out that fast.
I think there was even some reporters from Japan.
[reporters clamoring]
[narrator] The media hounds everyone involved in the case.
Including Sheriff Marlin Gillespie.
I just remember the phones were ringing off the hook.
[phone ringing]
No one had pagers, no one had cellphones
and my father couldn't take the phone
off the hook because he depended on that.
They needed to get ahold of them for work.
[narrator] But reporters aren't the only curious visitors
to suddenly appear in Snowflake.
Mysterious out of towners cramp up
amongst the search parties.
You always tell, back then, a government car
because it was just a ugly color.
And the rims always matched the color of the car.
There'd be two guys sitting in there.
Suits and sunglasses just watching you.
[Ben] Most people know the Men in Black from pop culture
but there have been historically
verified incidents
where unidentified government agents
follow up on cases like this.
[John] I take off to go somewhere
and by the time I got to where I was gonna go
they were already sitting there waiting.
You know? I don't know how they knew where I was going.
[Bryce] People have suspected over the years
that among that crowd of people that included journalists
and UFO observers were people from the United States government
who wanted to know more about this case.
And why would they wanna know more about it?
Because they knew UFOs were real whether they admitted it
to the public or not, but, uh, they thought
that the Travis Walton case was a pretty good case.
[intense music playing]
[narrator] Travis has now been missing for three days.
His loved ones face an agonizing lack of answers.
[Dana] I think everybody got more and more worried.
Everybody was more tense and scared
the longer the time went by.
[narrator] With every passing hour the crew
feels the crushing pressure of suspicion.
[Steve] I wasn't going out.
I was hiding at a girlfriend's house
and staying away from everybody.
I'd say four out of five people thought, you know,
it was either a hoax or, or was a murder or something.
[narrator] Even without a body,
the sheriff's department investigates the case
as a homicide.
It doesn't take long to zero in on a suspect.
Crew member Allen Dalis.
[Steve] The cops, they found out
about a fight that Travis and Allen Dalis was in.
He'd fight anybody, and he could get pretty ornery.
He didn't like Mike and Travis.
[Don] I was pretty confident in my head at that time
that Allen had something to do with this.
I accused him of killing Travis.
[narrator] Authorities turn up the heat
on the remaining crew members.
[Tammy] I remember my dad saying
that Marlin Gillespie was questioning the boys down
saying, "Just admit, you killed him.
Just admit it."
[Steve] Flake pulls up and he says,
"We know you didn't do the killing,
but we know for sure that Allen Dalis killed Travis
or Jon Goulette killed him."
[John] Once I figured out what they were doing and what they thought,
you know, I pretty much stayed away from the cops, you know.
[narrator] The sheriff's department
asks Mike Rogers and the other crewmen
to submit to a polygraph examination.
Rogers jumps at the chance to clear their names.
We told him, you know, "We'll take polygraph test.
We'll... We'll take sodium pentothal, hypnosis,
anything you can give us because this thing really happened
and we don't like this thing about you accusing us of murder."
[narrator] The men are summoned
to take polygraph tests at the Navajo County
courthouse in nearby Holbrook.
It was scary, really scary
to go into that courthouse.
The courthouse and the jail was the same building.
[Steve] I was more scared the day of the polygraph test
than I was when I saw Travis getting zapped.
[John] I didn't know who was gonna give us this test.
I was thinking, "You know, they could be setting us up.
No matter what, we're probably gonna fail this
and we'll probably gonna go to jail."
When we went in there we figured we weren't coming out.
This polygraph test went on all day long.
Up until the evening.
Because the test take about two hours a piece.
[narrator] As part of the test, the polygrapher asks
each crewmen the same series of questions three times.
The first three questions regard
the alleged murder of Travis Walton.
The subject of the final question
is the UFO.
[Mike] Once the test got underway
he started changing his mind really quickly.
By the time he had tested all of us,
he seemed to be a believer.
[narrator] Five of the six men passed
the lie detector test outright.
Only Allen Dalis' test comes back as inconclusive.
Allen actually passed the first two run throughs of this test.
It was inconclusive because he pulled himself lose
from a scene in the last run through.
[narrator] The results of the polygraph
stunned everyone in the town of Snowflake.
Perhaps none more so than the polygrapher himself.
I talked to him after the test,
and he indicated to me that... That apparently he was wrong.
Unofficially he said that he believed
that we had told the truth.
[narrator] For five excruciating days,
Travis Walton has been missing.
The skeptical sheriff's department
is back to square one.
If Travis Walton hasn't been murdered
and no one can find his body in the woods,
where could he be?
[suspenseful music playing]
Late that night, the phone rings at Travis' sister's home.
[telephone ringing]
His brother-in-law, Grant, answers.
[Grant] I had come home from work.
Phone rang
and it was a voice on the other side saying,
"This is Travis.
Come and get me."
[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] Travis Walton has been missing for five days.
When Travis' brother-in-law, Grant, answers a late-night
phone call, he assumes it's a prank.
[Grant] And I said, "Yeah, right."
I get ready to hang up he said,
"No, no, no, no, please don't hang up."
And, so then I started listening
and then the conversation ended.
I got my wife out of bed, we went to her mother's place.
His brother Duane was there visiting.
We got in the truck, drove to Heber
where he described where he was.
I must've passed out 'cause it seemed like almost
immediately they were, um... Headlights of the truck
were shining into the phone booth
and my brother came over there and lifted me up.
And I was just hysterical.
He sort of lifted me into the truck
and I was just breaking down, just disintegrating.
[narrator] In this rare archival interview
Travis recalls the events leading up to the phone call.
[narrator] Wandering the road for what feels
like hours, Travis recognizes
the lights of Heber, Arizona, in the distance.
[Travis] I ran down into the town
and called my family.
"Come and get me."
[narrator] On the way back to Snowflake,
Travis struggles to piece together his experience.
[Travis] One of the biggest shocks I had to deal with
when I was returned was finding out
that this brief period of time
had somehow taken over five days.
My brother, he asked me to feel my face
and I had a, had a... You know, weeks growth.
I was... It really took my mind just to reel at that
because as far as I knew it was the same night.
I was trying to describe what I'd experienced,
but I was just making it worst.
And he finally said, "Don't try to talk right now."
He talked about how scared the family had been.
[narrator] For Travis' family, the past week
has been an emotional roller coaster.
[Grant] Everybody was relieved,
but they were still kind of in a shock mode.
It didn't affect me as much as it did my wife,
and she still doesn't wanna be bothered with it.
[Angie] When Travis came back
we were all so relieved.
At the same time the story was so hard
to fit in to your realm of reality, you know?
[narrator] Even decades later, the trauma of those five days
still weighs heavy on Travis and his now wife Dana.
[Dana] I was really, really worried,
and scared that you... What happened to you,
I didn't know if you'd ever be returned.
Specially the more days went by,
gets more and more scary.
Well...
[Travis] Did you ever think for a minute
that maybe the guys or Mike or something
-were covering up a killing, a murder? -No.
No, I never thought that.
Yep.
I even went out to the window, and I looked up on the sky
and I said, "Will you please bring Travis back?"
[sobbing]
-I'm sorry. -That must've hurt you.
[narrator] With Travis in such a fragile state,
his brother Duane is determined to protect him
from any intense scrutiny by the media
or law enforcement.
Desperate for assistance, he reaches out
to the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
or A.P.R.O.
A Tucson based UFO investigative group.
[Ben] Jim and Coral Lorenzen really assembled A.P.R.O.
with the key focus of having a credible
and scientific, unbiased perspective.
That's why they brought in medical doctors,
they brought in, uh, scientists that were respected
in their fields and consulted with them
whenever they did a case.
[Travis] My brother Duane, he had contacted
Jim Lorenzen, the head
of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
who had a couple of medical doctors
in their Phoenix membership
who agreed to do an examination.
[narrator] In the dead of night,
Duane Walton secretly sneaks Travis out of Snowflake.
A.P.R.O. arranged for Travis to go to a hotel in Phoenix.
He checked in under an assumed name
and then they sent over two A.P.R.O.
affiliated medical doctors.
[Don] They didn't want any leaks
of what was happening with Travis
with his, uh, medical condition,
and, and all the testing.
[narrator] Before medical tests are performed,
Travis tell the physicians what he remembered
from the night of November 5th, 1975,
starting with the moment he exited the truck.
[Travis] It just was kind of a... A sort of an impulse.
Seeing this object there...
For some reason I just kind of assumed
that it was gonna take off before I got very far.
We could hear a real low rumbling sort of a sound.
Pounding, you know, like a heartbeat sort of a thing.
And then some real high frequency sorts of sounds.
Very hard to describe these sounds.
The closer I got, it suddenly got louder,
and it started to move.
I was startled and out of fear I just jumped for cover.
Then I was figuring out, "Boy, I've really got myself
in a bad situation here."
I stood up with the idea of running back to the truck,
but as soon as I raised up,
that's when I felt this stunning force.
[narrator] The next thing Travis remembers
is waking up on the side of the road five days later.
To make sense of the missing time in between,
Travis agrees to undergo a controversial
technique called regressive hypnosis.
Regressive hypnosis has been used, uh,
popularly since the Betty and Barney Hill
abduction in 1961.
Tapes of Betty and Barney
while abducted are still chilling even today.
Oh. Oh!
[narrator] An hypnosis session is scheduled with A.P.R.O.'s
director of research, Dr. James Harder.
In the meantime, Travis' doctors perform
a battery of tests.
[Travis] Blood and urine samples were taken
that were put through the county medical examiners
drug screen that's extremely good at detecting
traces of drugs of which there were none.
[narrator] Despite A.P.R.O.'s and the family's best efforts,
Travis' reappearance does not remain secret for long.
The operator who patched Travis through to call
his sister's house listened in on the call.
Remember, this is 1975, where they actually did have
operators who patched people through.
She recognized the name as he tried to make this,
uh, collect call from Travis Walton,
that this was big news.
So she takes that information
and leaks it to the sheriff's office.
[Shelley] His family was fully aware that there had been
an ensuing search for Travis,
and yet they chose not to let the law enforcement community,
um, know that he had been found.
[narrator] Travis' family feels he is
too emotionally unstable to face questioning
from the sheriff's department.
For the first few days after his return,
Travis' brother Duane acts as the family's spokesperson.
[reporter 3] Obviously, Duane, you know your own brother
probably better than anybody else.
Do you believe the story?
I've never seen him play a practical joke in his adult life.
[narrator] The veracious media runs with the story.
Before long, it's international news.
Well, now the story that has been hitting
the headlines all over the United States
is the one we told you about last week,
of the man who disappeared after seeing
what his friends thought was a flying saucer.
After a five days search by police,
Travis Walton has turned up unharmed and he says
that he was taken aboard a spaceship but the police,
of course, no way of checking his story.
[narrator] As law enforcement
and journalists scramble hear the story firsthand,
Travis remains sequestered in a Phoenix hotel room
reliving his experience of abject horror.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] On November 14th, 1975,
four days after his return, Travis Walton
meets with Dr. James Harder
at the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
in a Phoenix hotel room.
Surrounded by his loved ones,
Dana and his brother Duane, Travis prepares to go undergo
a technique called regressive hypnosis
to help him face his most petrifying memories.
[fan squeaking]
[narrator] Physically, Travis is sitting on the hotel room sofa...
...but mentally, Dr. Harder takes him back to the moment
he was abducted on board the alien ship
and the next terrifying five days of missing time.
Visualize just what's in front of you there.
Tell me what it is that your eyes see.
[Travis] I was laying on my back.
I came to slowly...
At first I thought I was in a hospital.
I felt like there was something seriously wrong.
There was a light above me.
It wasn't so bright I couldn't look at it, but it sort of,
uh, interfered with seeing other things around me.
But I was looking around to see where I was.
It was a very small space,
but there was something lying on my chest.
There seem to be, you know, some kind of, uh,
light coming from it.
When I looked beyond the edge of that, I saw faces,
but it was so blurry that I kind of assumed
it was like, uh, doctors wearing, uh, surgical masks.
It was only a matter of seconds
before I realized that these weren't human doctors.
This was an alien face.
They were about five foot tall, no hair,
very white skin,
small features except for large eyes.
[narrator] The beings Travis encounters,
they're a striking resemblance
to grey aliens reported in other UFO abduction stories.
Greys are the most common description
of some of these others that have been visiting us.
Three and a half to four feet tall,
big black eyes,
larger heads, not much of a nose,
not much of a mouth.
Spindly little things, that's what he saw.
[narrator] To Travis, this strange appearance
and blank expressions are unnerving.
[Travis] The feeling of pain, the feeling of suffocation,
at the same time they expressed no emotion
to their face.
It seemed threatening.
I just freaked out at that point.
And jumped off of the table there.
And when I did, this device fell off.
[narrator] Travis' survival instincts kick in full force.
[Travis] It was were just fight or flight
and I grabbed, um, rod or tube
and just started swinging to the air.
The only opening in the room was beyond them.
[narrator] Suddenly and without warning,
the aliens change course.
[Travis] They left the room.
I was afraid they'd come back,
so I left there, uh, looking for a way out.
The whole craft was lit up in a way that I would consider
to be pretty, pretty dim by, you know, human standards.
I felt like there was an insufficient amount of air.
Like I couldn't get enough air just breathing.
Air was thin but humid.
[narrator] Struggling to see and desperate for air,
Travis comes across another door.
The room appears to be empty except for a single chair.
As Travis approaches, he notices the light
in the room shift.
[Travis] There was some kind of a projection
or some kind of a viewing thing
in this room where you could see a map of stars.
The points of lights that came through it
were not real visible until I got near the chair.
Away from the chair the walls didn't seem
to have those points of lights so much.
[narrator] Could it be some kind of control room?
Travis looks for any means of escape.
[Travis] On the arm of the chair was a screen
and some colored spots, uh, I took to be buttons.
I was just thinking these buttons
might open one of these doorway looking things.
Foolishly assuming that a door
would just be opened to the air,
and I could drop to the ground, you know?
Fifteen-20 feet.
I could handle that just to get out of there.
[narrator] The buttons have no effect.
Travis has no choice but to look for another way out.
Just then he notices, he's not alone.
The form looks oddly familiar.
Could it be human?
In a Phoenix hotel room,
Travis Walton's loved ones sit in stunned silence
as he recounts the traumatic nightmare
of being trapped aboard a UFO.
I didn't actually hear the story
until he was put under hypnosis,
and I was in the room with him when...
So when he told the story it was really...
Shocking, it was scary to me, what he had to go through.
[narrator] After trying in vain to open a doorway
or escape hatch,
Travis has no choice but to return to the corridor
and search for another means of escape,
only this time, there's something or someone
blocking his way.
[Travis] There was a what I took to be a human being.
I immediately just assume this was air force, NASA,
somebody, you know, there to intervene
and, uh, take me away from these creatures.
[narrator] In a rare, archival interview,
Travis describes his encounter with the being.
This was a... A human-looking person.
They'd pass in a crowd as an individual.
He was bigger than me, taller, and more muscular.
Very large individual.
I went up and, uh, tried to talk to this guy
and, uh, he didn't answer me.
When I started yelling questions,
trying to tell him, "What are these things?
Where am I?" You know,
"Get me out of here."
All those kind of things, he didn't really seem to,
uh, be responding to anything I was saying.
[narrator] Instead, the suited stranger
takes Travis by the arm
and escorts him further down the corridor.
[Travis] I went down the hallway with him,
very dimly lit, but lit from above.
When we came to a door,
I did not see this human-looking individual
do anything to make the door open, but it did.
[narrator] Travis and his enigmatic escort
entered what appears to be some kind of an air lock.
We went into a little booth-like section of the hallway.
[narrator] Then, Travis is overcome
by a sudden shift in the environment.
[Travis] I could feel that the air
coming in was cooler.
I could breathe better,
and that the outside light was so much brighter by comparison.
[narrator] Travis describes being ushered
from something like an alien aircraft hanger
in the seldom seen BBC documentary.
[Travis] He let me out of this craft,
which appeared to be parked inside of a,
a larger building, or a larger craft.
He just took me right out of there
down a hallway to a room
where there were some other people who looked like him.
[narrator] These two beings are not wearing helmets,
giving Travis a clear look
at what ufologists refer to as "Nordic aliens."
Tall, human-like figures, Scandinavian in appearance.
In the pantheon of aliens that keep getting
described by people who have had
abduction experiences you have primarily the greys...
...but you also have something called the Nordic.
The Nordic has come to represent basically
a human-looking alien.
In Travis' case, the Nordic he saw was about six feet two inches tall,
kind of brownish, blondish hair.
Basically, like a Caucasian. Could've been from Sweden.
[narrator] Travis' attention quickly shifts
to an examination table in the center of the room.
The mysterious being in the space suit
pushes him toward it.
[Travis] He seemed to be trying to get me
to get on the table
and I was very much resisting that.
I became alarmed that he was not answering my questions.
I was obviously terrified and asking,
"Where are you taking me? What's this all about?"
[narrator] Travis fights with all his might,
but the Nordics step in and overpower him
with superhuman strength.
[Travis] Very frightening, I was fighting back
immediately, no longer cooperating.
I thought I was pretty strong in those days,
but they didn't have too much trouble getting me down on the table.
They put this mask over my face,
it's kind of like an oxygen mask.
There was no hose connected to it,
they put it over my face
and that was the last thing I knew, I just blacked out.
Next thing I remember was waking up
outside, cold air
coming into my clothes.
[narrator] In a Phoenix hotel room,
Travis awakens from a trance,
after recounting his harrowing alien abduction experience.
And to his loved ones, it's clear
Travis will never be the same.
[Dana] He seemed really different.
He seemed traumatized, he seemed kind of scared.
I felt sorry for him in a way,
like I wanted to help him, but I felt helpless.
Like, I couldn't do anything for him.
[narrator] But a trauma of alien contact
was just the beginning.
Travis' story would spark a firestorm of debate
and speculation that ignites
the town of Snowflake and engulfs the entire world.
[dramatic music playing]
After a strenuous battery
of medical tests and regressive hypnotherapy
in Phoenix, Travis Walton returns home to Snowflake.
[Don] When I saw Travis the next time, he was...
He was skinny.
But the relief and the joy that I saw on our mother
was awesome.
How she just stood there and cried.
And my mother didn't cry about anything.
But over that she certainly did.
We thought we had lost a family member.
[narrator] The media frenzy,
sparked by the abduction story,
only intensifies as Travis re-emerges.
[Don] Oh, it was a circus.
Mother didn't have a fence around our front yard.
There was probably 100 people out there.
Reporters, all kinds of cameras.
[narrator] In an effort to keep
the camera hounds at bay, a still traumatized Travis
reluctantly grants his first interviews.
[Barbara Frum] Mr. Walton, how are you?
[Travis] I'm feeling a lot better.
[Barbara] Where were you?
[Travis] I don't know. [chuckles softly]
[interviewer] Did you tried to communicate with them?
Well, I tried to communicate with them
but there was no answer.
They never talked to me or anything.
[narrator] The unwanted scrutiny
pushes the town's people to the brink.
[Shelley] I thought the media attention was insane.
There was so much interest in it,
and at the time I just remember thinking to myself,
"How can these people really believe this story?" You know.
Kinda skeptical.
You know, seeing is believing, and I don't see nothing.
It was the talk of the town for a long time,
and I think there were people that believed in UFOs
and people that felt that people that believed in UFOs were crazy.
I didn't know if I went to a bar
if somebody's gonna buy me a beer or,
or take a punch at me, you now.
[narrator] New rumors circulate
that this was all a hoax.
The crew, once suspected of murder,
now find themselves scrutinized alongside Travis' family,
accused of pulling off a massive con.
[Steve] You couldn't walk through town
without people looking at you.
When he came back they thought it was a big ole joke.
[John] Ten days after that happened I left the area.
Went somewhere where nobody knew me
and didn't know my involvement in that and never told a soul.
[Don] It was tough.
I think people looked at us in a way
that we were putting on a show.
[narrator] Chief among the skeptics
is a man who would become Travis Walton's nemesis.
The king of UFO debunkers, Phillip Klass.
[Ben] Phillip Klass is probably
the most well-renowned UFO skeptic, uh,
debunker, uh, maybe of all history.
He had devoted a great deal of time
and as a matter of fact had written books ridiculing
the idea that UFOs should be considered serious at all.
In my opinion, the belief in UFOs
will persist as long as there are people on this earth,
uh, but it is a myth.
[Bryce] Now, Phillip Klass was a very bright man, a journalist.
He just didn't buy the Travis Walton story.
He thought these guys made it up,
and he set out to prove that anyway that he could.
[narrator] Klass does extensive research
into the Walton story and claims the crew
led by Mike Rogers concocted the UFO scheme
to get out of their logging contract.
We had completed probably over 80% of the contract,
but we were also nearing the completion deadline
on the contract.
[Angie] And they wanted to get it done before the snow
started coming because this was in November.
So they were trying to hurry up and get it done before it defaulted.
[Travis] The skeptics made much of this
that this whole things was some kind of a scheme
to get out of, uh, finishing the contract,
but it was not at all to Mike's advantage
for the contract to end.
There was a lot of money being held back.
And we had completed most of it,
but once the incident happened there was no way
that the contract was gonna get finished.
[Angie] After that happened,
Mike couldn't get that crew to go back out there.
Maybe some of them might've been willing,
but most of them were not.
[Travis] They brought in another crew
to finish what little we had left.
Much to Mike's financial disadvantage.
[narrator] And if Mike Rogers did think up the UFO story,
how did he get his six crewmates
to go along with his farfetched scheme?
[Bryce] If you really think about it,
the idea that you would conspire with, uh, six or seven people
to tell an outrageous story that would cause people
to think you might be a murderer,
it just defies logic.
[narrator] The level of criticism he and the crew
faced is yet another shock to Travis and his family.
I don't like it when people came out
with accusations against him.
I knew he was telling the truth,
I believed him and that was it.
[Travis] Well, there was from the get-go
a great deal of resistance.
The idea that there could be any life
in the universe, other than human life.
And I think that's a very close minded
and limited thinking.
It's maybe partially motivated out of fear or people
feeling that it was a threat to religious convictions.
But whatever it was, many of the accusations
that were levied were easily disproved
because they were contraries to verifiable facts.
[narrator] Yet some allegations would haunt
Travis Walton for years, leading him to wonder
if there's a coordinated campaign underway
to discredit him,
and if so, who's behind it?
[instrumental music playing]
In Snowflake, Arizona,
alien abductee Travis Walton and his loved ones
struggle to get some semblance of normal life.
About two years later we were married.
We dated steady for those two years.
Fell in love and decided to get married.
We tried to make it like nothing happened,
so we didn't talk about it a lot.
[narrator] But try as they might,
Travis and Dana find themselves hounded
by small town gossip.
You know, I could see people looking at me
in the store and I could tell they were thinking, you know,
things about me.
[Ben] And they start making up rumors
saying, "Well, the crew was probably all using drugs.
They were all hallucinating."
[Shelley] We're talking in the '70s
and what really happened
if there was drugs involved, alcohol or whatever.
[narrator] Travis' medical tests reveal
no sign of drugs in his system.
Travis didn't do drugs. Travis hardly even ever drank.
If he did, I don't even think he did drink.
[John] That job was pretty dangerous, actually.
Those chainsaws don't slice you,
they tear chunks of meat out.
You can't get high or drink and do that job, you know.
I don't know anybody who could.
[narrator] Despite the naysayers,
Travis and the crew have their champions.
Most notably groups like A.P.R.O.,
who gather and examine evidence to support the abduction claims.
First on their list,
Travis Walton's physical condition.
The people who came and got Travis Walton
found a severely dehydrated guy who didn't look good.
He was in the same clothes that he was wearing
when he had disappeared
and when they weighed him later,
uh, that next morning, they found out he was at least ten pounds
lighter than when he had gone up in the mountains.
[narrator] Yet Travis' blood test provides the A.P.R.O.
doctors with some striking information.
[Travis] Part of, uh, what they were looking for
was the presence of what they call ketones,
which was to indicate whether my body
had been consuming its own reserves, you know,
fat, even muscle in order to maintain life.
[Ben] He did lose ten to 12 pounds
in a short period of time.
He was severely dehydrated
but yet no ketones were present.
So, it is possible that these visitors knew enough
about human biology.
They tried to nourish him in some way.
[narrator] And if he wasn't picked up
after his crewmates left him in the woods,
how did Travis survive for those five days?
To believe he was left out
in Sitgreaves National Forest, not only overnight,
but for five days is outrageous.
At night it gets very, very cold.
The guy had a jean jacket and, and a pair of jeans on.
It would've been a tough, tough things to survive.
[narrator] A.P.R.O. researches in Arizona
also uncover evidence
of an increasing level of UFO activity
in the months leading up to the abduction.
[Ben] We had an event that takes place in May,
just outside the hills of Tucson.
We have a mother with her children who comes across
a silvery glowing object, but most interestingly,
she hears a low rumbling sound
that's very similar to what Travis described
right before this thing appeared to take off.
[narrator] Perhaps the strongest evidence of all
comes from the sheriff's department.
[Travis] To have six witnesses all testifying
in detail to the same events, and all passing
lie detector tests from the state police.
[Bryce] People have gone back and forth over the years
about what a polygraph actually means,
but one thing we do know, though, is when somebody passes it
and it's just them, it gives you a certain amount of legitimacy.
But when you have six different people
taking a lie detector test
and they all tell the same story,
your chances that the story they're telling is accurate
is about, uh, a million to one.
[Travis] Dr. James Harder, he was saying
that the evidence to support that this really happened
would've been sufficient to convict a person
of murder in an American court of law.
[narrator] On February 7th, 1976,
Travis and his brother Duane
take their own lie detector tests.
The results shocked everyone.
In February of 1976,
Travis Walton and his brother Duane
submit to polygraph examinations.
They both pass.
Landing further credibility
to Travis' UFO abduction claims.
For years after the incident,
Travis and his six crew members
never waver from their story.
Eventually, the tide of public opinion
turns in their favor.
[Bryce] In 1975, when the Walton case is big news,
the government's institutional response to UFOs back then
was, "It's probably not a real thing, don't sweat it.
Go on about your lives."
Now the government says a couple
of really profound things.
First of all, they have confirmed that there are
many objects out there and that they're real
and that they're unidentified.
And secondly, they said, "We don't make them."
So, lots of people believed in them before,
but now we have a more of a sense
they are real because our own government is admitting it.
[pilot] Oh, got it!
[narrator] And the attitude in the Southwestern state,
known for some of the biggest UFO sightings
in the world has also changed.
I've known, uh, Travis Walton for a long time.
After seeing UFOs in New Mexico, Arizona
and California, I said, "Well, there must be
something that, uh... To what he said."
I do believe that there are UFOs.
But you see things cruising around up there
it's like, "What the heck was that?
No, okay, is that a satellite? No, it's moving a little bit too fast."
[producer] Do you believe there's something out there?
I think so.
Our tales completely switched around
where four out of five people do believe it now.
Before they didn't.
You know, it was exactly the opposite.
[Steve] I'm sorry that Allen and Dwayne Smith aren't here,
because for years people just thought we were nuts.
Now, you've got people who do believe,
and Allen and Dwayne Smith aren't here to, to see that.
[narrator] The shift in public perception
began in 1978
when Travis Walton wrote
and published a book about his ordeal.
The Walton Experience is the first book written
by a UFO abductee,
and it's sort of withstood the test of time.
[Ben] My impression of first reading
Travis' book, it was so well written
that he presents the arguments before his case
and against his case
and takes each individual criticism and debunks it one by one.
[Bryce] What it allowed readers to do
for the first time is to get in his head.
This is an honest man, who' trying to tell us
what really happened to him.
[narrator] Travis' story catches the attention
of Hollywood
and on March 12th, 1993,
Paramount Pictures releases Fire in the Sky.
A film based on his book.
[Bryce] Talking about the Travis Walton abduction,
there was X-amount of people that sort of watched it
when it happened real time with news coverage,
there were a few more that read the book,
but then there were a lot more that watched the movie.
And the people who watched the movie
had their minds open
to the possibility that an abduction could happen
because the movie starts with "based on a true story."
[Dana] After the movie was made,
people became more and more enlightened I guess.
More and more people believed.
And more people came up to me and said that they supported us,
so... That was... That was great.
[narrator] The media forces Travis
into the spotlight once more to share
the terrifying true story behind the movie.
It was glowing, disk-shaped object.
Uh, it's kinda, like, shaped like two pie pans.
Placed lip to lip with a dome on top
and it was glowing, kind of a golden, uh, yellow color.
[narrator] Like clockwork, Travis' credibility
comes under attack.
All the familiar skeptics re-emerge,
including Philip Klass.
But this time, Travis has the last word.
Are you saying, Phillip, that all seven
of these people are lying?
I'm afraid we have to say that on the basis
of physical evidence.
[Larry King] Meaning?
Physical evidence that should've been there
but was not.
[Larry King] Why are you laughing, Travis?
Well, because this is typical of the sort of reasoning pattern
this man uses in attacking all UFO cases.
Uh, he's equating the absence of evidence
to be the evidence of absence.
[narrator] The film's release is a moral victory
for Travis Walton and his crewmates.
[Ben] Fire in the Sky.
It wasn't just a close encounters of the third kind
type of movie, this is something based on real life.
This is what happened to a man and six other
of his crewmembers.
We can't just easily dismiss abduction cases
because look at all the evidence in favor of this one.
[narrator] In the aftermath of Fire in the Sky,
a new generation of UFO investigators
take up Travis' cause.
Can they find actual physical evidence
to prove Travis' story
beyond any doubt?
In 2014,
UFO researcher
and documentarian, Ben Hansen,
meets Travis Walton
at the site of his UFO abduction to examine
any remaining evidence of Travis' alien encounter.
Years ago Travis, uh, and I were filming, um,
kind of a survey before we had a conference here.
So, right here is where we determined
through the witnesses and especially Travis' recollection
where this object was hovering.
This is the first time we're gonna open it up to the public.
We didn't want the public coming in here,
knowing the location and start taking stuff or planting things.
We wanted to know exactly what kind of evidence,
if anything, was left over.
[narrator] Ben and the research team
take a methodical approach to the date collection.
[Ben] We gritted this whole area and we treated it
like a crime scene.
While we're going through everything, the topsoil, uh,
we're looking at rocks to see if they're magnetic,
we come across some of these tree stumps.
Now these have broken off shortly after the incident.
You can actually count back the rings, of course,
and see this tree would've been here 1975.
[narrator] On closer inspection
of the tree rings, Ben and Travis noticed
something very strange indeed.
[Ben] If you think of a tree ring,
they're usually very equally sized,
uh, concentric circles.
Okay, on all sides.
But these trees had something unique.
The rings on the side facing the clearing
was spaced out further.
Meaning there was a greater volume of growth
on that side of the tree alone.
And we started noticing this as we're going around
in a circle and came across the discovery
that they all seemed to be pointing
in a direction towards the center.
The epicenter where the craft was hovering.
[narrator] Could radiation from the UFO,
as evidenced by the Geiger counter readings at the site
in 1975, have caused these trees to mutate?
[Ben] I started researching a bit
and I found a couple of studies
that happened after Chernobyl.
The studies found that these trees grow
exponentially greater than any other time period.
So is that what happened here?
[narrator] At an independent lab in Ohio,
the soil samples taken from the site are tested against
to control group.
The findings blow everyone away.
There was a higher concentration of iron
and other ferrous materials as compared to the controlled
samples which were much further away.
Now what does that mean?
Other, uh, notable UFO cases have indicated sometimes
a trace evidence of ferrous materials
as if something, um, creating a large magnetic field
was pulling these particles up from the lower layers.
[narrator] Based on these findings,
Ben Hansen and many other open-minded researchers
draw the same conclusion.
The Travis Walton abduction case
offers perhaps the best evidence to date
of alien visitation to planet Earth.
I can say that I fully believe what he experienced
is how he and the crew experiences
very strange event.
[narrator] But as Walton's story continues to be
more accepted as truth, frightening questions remain.
Who are these alien creatures and what do they want?
Travis Walton makes one final trip
from his home in Snowflake to the site of his alien abduction.
It's, It's just, um, kind of a PTSD kind of a thing.
I still feel apprehension.
We're getting close.
[narrator] For Travis, this is still an emotional journey.
[sighs]
[Travis] This was really a turning point
in my life what happened here.
It's amazing to think how much time has gone by.
Little did I know, uh,
my life would never be the same.
[narrator] Four decades later,
Travis reflects on what it all means.
[Travis] Well, I had a choice after this incident happened.
Could I just shut up about it and hope people
will forget about it and it'll go away
or get out there and defend myself
and, uh, set the record straight?
Aliens exist, we're not alone in the universe.
I think people need to realize that there is a reality here.
[narrator] And no one knows this better
than the six men who witnessed Travis' alien encounter.
Every one of those crewmen has stood by the story
of that happened throughout their lives
and some of them are no longer with us.
They've had the courage to stand up
to the naysayers and they endured that
from the beginning, even... Even before I was returned.
[Steve] I lived it and it's still hard to believe.
Man, I've been called a liar so many times.
[laughing]
I'm just used to it, I guess. It doesn't really bother me.
If you believe it, you believe it. You don't, you don't.
[John] It's always gonna be there, you know.
And sometime if bothers me a lot,
you know, but it did happen and why did it happen?
Why was it us?
[Mike] Everybody was affected differently, you know.
Greatly affected my life, but it's all for the better I think.
For the better.
It was real.
It was real that day.
[Dana] What I would say to skeptics is
walk a mile in my shoes.
They need to do more research,
they need to be more open minded.
[pilot] Oh, got it!
[laughing] Woo-hoo!
[narrator] Now, recent government disclosures
lend further credence to the experiences
of Travis and his fellow crewmembers.
The last three years, basically,
we have seen story after story that establishes,
uh, that UFOs are more real than anybody's ever believed.
[Ben] Perhaps the most important modern-day
revelation from our government is an official
acknowledgement that the phenomenon is real.
Something is going on.
We definitely cannot rule out extraterrestrial.
If the world had felt the same back in 1975,
I don't think that the case would've received
so much negative criticism and ridicule.
[Travis] I think that the reason
the Pentagon disclosures film and statements
that they have evidence, it's basically they're saying,
"It's a matter of fact." It's very..
It's very good progress.
So it's a relief that they're going to come
so far as to say, "Yes, there's something here
and we don't know what it is."
[Bryce] I think that one of the things you're going to see
happening in the next few years are we're gonna have
congressional hearings on this very topic
and I would submit to the senators
and the congress people
who are thinking of putting those hearings together
that they might want to consider calling up Travis Walton
and bringing him up to Washington and asking him
to tell his story directly. I think they'd like to hear it.
[Travis] This is the place where my life was changed forever.
Eventually I'm hoping something good will come of it.
At the minimum,
uh, make humans realize that we're not so special,
uh, that, uh, the world there is.
The fact that these aliens exist after all this time
with vastly superior technology
has to mean that they, uh,
ceased to be war like in attacking each other.
So it's, uh, sort of a message to humanity
to figure out to be a whole lot less savage
and a whole lot smarter about where we're going with all this.